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The University of Southampton
PhilosophyPart of Humanities

Justification - Liberal foundationalism

You are in good company. Many contemporary philosophers are foundationalists who adopt a more liberal picture of the foundations than Descartes.

There are many versions of liberal foundationalism. A key question that divides liberal foundationalists is whether all foundational beliefs are based on evidence. Some liberal foundationalists hold that certain beliefs qualify as foundational not in virtue of being justified in a direct way by our evidence, but rather by being products of certain reliable belief-forming processes, such as perception and intuition.

To see which of these views you might prefer, consider a simpler question:

Do you think that a person has to have good evidence to be justified in believing something?

YesNo
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